Eleanor Friedberger: Last Summer – review

As the singer with the Fiery Furnaces, Eleanor Friedberger was integral to the band's capricious sound, yet always seemed oddly subordinate to her older brother Matthew's aggressively experimental musical vision. Freed of his obstreperous direction, her debut solo album is an almost straightforward pop delight: the pace is relaxed, the rhythms are tidy, the melodies are unabashed, and any kinks and wonky bits (she is a Friedberger, after all) are firmly controlled. My Mistakes bounds along on a relentlessly cheerful synth riff and beams golden blasts of saxophone; One-Month Marathon embellishes its plain strummed chords and muted drums with lacy guitar trills; Roosevelt Island skims pebbles across a pool of liquid funk. But if Friedberger is willing to play by the indie-pop-folk-soul rules with her backing tracks, as a singer she remains as wayward as ever, her velvety voice, so urgent and melancholy in its expression, rendering even the most nakedly autobiographical lyrics here impenetrably opaque.